Dear reader, you probably know that the humanities have rarely been popular in the job market. Humanities courses are not professional courses after all and do not prepare a student for a specific job. People may derive comfort from a philosopher but employers rarely deliberately seek philosophy graduates. One branch of humanities study, however, is popular enough to warrant its place even in Indian private universities, that being English. The course labelled English in universities and colleges has usually taught English literature. My knowledgeable readers will know that this seeming love for literature is a love which dissipates as soon as most students attend their first few classes.
Unrequited love is one of the greatest subjects of speculation. My wise readers however will have already figured out the reason for this match made outside heaven. It is not literature which has captured the Indian imagination. Bengali, Urdu or Hindi literature courses are difficult to find in Indian private universities. Most public university and college teachers of literature in ‘Indian’ languages keep calm and carry on when they assess answer scripts. Literary studies do not drive the education market.
It is the study of language, particularly English, the language spoken by Donald Trump to Jack Ma, and the world and power which they inhabit and possess, to which the Indian population wants to belong. This is the true love which the Indian population as a whole generally feels. Love is studied in myriad ways, through eloquent avowals to grudging rejections. The Bollywood buffs among you will have seen in Dum Laga ke Haisha or Mukkabaaz the love and loathing for English in times of daily war and peace. The film Hindi Medium deals specifically with this love. The knowledge of the English language is what the Indian population aspires to. Unlike smart-phones, it cannot be bought outright with money.
It is this love and aspiration which drives the English market in Indian colleges and universities. The Indian economy is one of the fastest growing among the larger economies of the world. If, as some theorists claim, markets move towards efficiency, why then does the English higher education market function as a marker of failure?
It is because of this gap in supply and demand. The market demands English language skills and proficiency but the market supplies English literature courses. When English studies were introduced in India at Hindoo College in 1817, the rationale was that studying exemplary works of literature in English would enhance skills in the language. That stream of thought has continued since. These two hundred years have undoubtedly turned out a high number of individuals who have proved that rationale to be a meritorious one. That high number though would not be higher than fifty percent. A far greater number of students in these two hundred years have applied to the English course the single greatest spanner in the cogs of humanities education—the ‘note’ book. The ‘note’ book is not to be confused with the ‘text’ book. Whereas the latter provides means for the student to access information, the ‘note’ book has only one raison d’être, to facilitate memorising. Memorising is a wonderful human ability and is something human beings yearn for as our brains keep getting older. At the college and university level though, if applied uncritically, it serves little purpose to the human brain except for providing kinds of stimulation and exercise as would be experienced while playing memory games on a smart-phone or the shopping-list round in Rojgere Ginni.
In literary studies at the higher education level, a text book would be either in the form of an edition of a literary text, or a book presenting critical views on literature. It is not prepared for the sake of an examination. Hence, there is no question-and-answer format in a text book for literary studies. The note book, which made its appearance in the book trade in India in the nineteenth-century soon after the establishment of universities, offers a different take on literature. Original research or critical analysis is not the forte of such compilers. Nor do such volumes present the actual text of long works, such as a novel or a play.
More often than not, the eager English student, impatient to assume the world, enters the portals of higher education in the bliss of youth and is soon alarmed to find a series of lectures instead of a stream of notes as they were used to in school. The lectures moreover are often about an entire novel, which as the professional nineteenth-century novelists realised to their pecuniary benefit, run into hundreds of pages.
My dear readers, I have little doubt that articles like this offer you either new avenues of cogitation or confirmation of your beliefs. We belong to the fortunate lot, who by virtue of social capital and hard work are at ease with such witticisms. My kind readers will however spare a thought for those who were unlucky to not have that social capital while in school. They are the ones who have that love and aspiration for the English language which we have already transcended.
For such aspirational learners, stringing together a few sentences in English is a daunting task, even when they have managed to successfully cross their higher-secondary education. It is this vast population of young India which the English market targets. The Indian market is undoubtedly a success story. Otherwise, despite the population boon or bane, India would not have managed to provide a better life to its citizens than some of its immediate neighbours. Prospective employers who seek English graduates seek personnel who can draft letters in an acceptable manner, go through large volumes of textual material, process it mentally and prepare concise reports based on such critical mental processing. Language skills and critical thinking are the two USPs of English graduates for prospective employers.
Such is the demand. What does most of the supply chain look like? The lack of social capital during schooldays robs the student of language skills. On entering college and opting for English, students try once again to acquire that one skill which will catapult them into the league of the extraordinarily powerful. However, they realise that the course does not address their lack of capital at all. Instead it assumes that they already had it or would acquire it tangentially by reading not English language primers but rather Shakespeare, Paradise Lost and sometimes even Homer in English translation. If the student feels cheated and hard done by the syllabus, I am sure my gentle readers would empathise with them.
Critical thinking is the other factor which employers feel that humanities students would be trained in. English students who may have had a chance of acquiring that skill through other roads, find that their road is blocked—blocked using language. Whereas they had expected a primrose path lined with English language primers, they find the way is steep and thorny and is pot-holed with texts in an obscure language. My gentle readers will again excuse them for abandoning the difficult path and choosing other means of survival.
In a system where admission in colleges is often based solely on marks received in school-leaving examinations and sometimes the cut-off is 99%, dear readers, I am sure we will not grudge them for thinking that marks maketh the mark in life. Where there is a will, there is a way. If classes and text books prove incomprehensible, note books often provide a path to interpret question papers. If even the profitable business of note books fails to provide relief, there is the world of private tuition, but that world, dear readers, is a subject for exploration for another day if I have managed to whet your appetite.
What then is the solution? How is the market to remedy the supply chain? The answer is not only blowing in the wind, it is there in the colleges as well. It is called Communicative English. It is just what most of the students and the employers want. Why then is it not more widely taught? Is English literature to be dispensed with then? These are questions that may be troubling you. Let me assuage your concerns. Literary pursuits are indeed a valid and well-established discipline of higher education, just as performance studies or film studies. Yet, these subjects are rarely taught in India and there are only a few places which offer these specialised courses. Let literary studies be also pushed into that domain, offered by only those colleges and universities which manage to attract those with the privilege of social capital which is necessary for pursuing such academic interests. Let other institutions identify what their students possess and want, and if it seeks to satiate the aspirational desires in the English language of such students, replace English with Communicative English. They may be turning their backs on two hundred years of Shakespeare studies in India. In doing so, they would also be turning their backs on almost two hundred years of Indian note books on Shakespeare. There will be no job-loss of the teachers either as teachers of English are well-equipped to also teach Communicative English.
The Indian English market will perhaps become more efficient through this rationalisation of the supply chain. Even if one is not bothered about education as a commodity and ignores the close relation between education and capital, dear reader, perhaps you will agree that society owes it to the students to free them from the bond of incomprehensible texts.
P.S. I had sent this article to Kolkata's The Telegraph and it was rejected.
Unrequited love is one of the greatest subjects of speculation. My wise readers however will have already figured out the reason for this match made outside heaven. It is not literature which has captured the Indian imagination. Bengali, Urdu or Hindi literature courses are difficult to find in Indian private universities. Most public university and college teachers of literature in ‘Indian’ languages keep calm and carry on when they assess answer scripts. Literary studies do not drive the education market.
It is the study of language, particularly English, the language spoken by Donald Trump to Jack Ma, and the world and power which they inhabit and possess, to which the Indian population wants to belong. This is the true love which the Indian population as a whole generally feels. Love is studied in myriad ways, through eloquent avowals to grudging rejections. The Bollywood buffs among you will have seen in Dum Laga ke Haisha or Mukkabaaz the love and loathing for English in times of daily war and peace. The film Hindi Medium deals specifically with this love. The knowledge of the English language is what the Indian population aspires to. Unlike smart-phones, it cannot be bought outright with money.
It is this love and aspiration which drives the English market in Indian colleges and universities. The Indian economy is one of the fastest growing among the larger economies of the world. If, as some theorists claim, markets move towards efficiency, why then does the English higher education market function as a marker of failure?
It is because of this gap in supply and demand. The market demands English language skills and proficiency but the market supplies English literature courses. When English studies were introduced in India at Hindoo College in 1817, the rationale was that studying exemplary works of literature in English would enhance skills in the language. That stream of thought has continued since. These two hundred years have undoubtedly turned out a high number of individuals who have proved that rationale to be a meritorious one. That high number though would not be higher than fifty percent. A far greater number of students in these two hundred years have applied to the English course the single greatest spanner in the cogs of humanities education—the ‘note’ book. The ‘note’ book is not to be confused with the ‘text’ book. Whereas the latter provides means for the student to access information, the ‘note’ book has only one raison d’être, to facilitate memorising. Memorising is a wonderful human ability and is something human beings yearn for as our brains keep getting older. At the college and university level though, if applied uncritically, it serves little purpose to the human brain except for providing kinds of stimulation and exercise as would be experienced while playing memory games on a smart-phone or the shopping-list round in Rojgere Ginni.
In literary studies at the higher education level, a text book would be either in the form of an edition of a literary text, or a book presenting critical views on literature. It is not prepared for the sake of an examination. Hence, there is no question-and-answer format in a text book for literary studies. The note book, which made its appearance in the book trade in India in the nineteenth-century soon after the establishment of universities, offers a different take on literature. Original research or critical analysis is not the forte of such compilers. Nor do such volumes present the actual text of long works, such as a novel or a play.
More often than not, the eager English student, impatient to assume the world, enters the portals of higher education in the bliss of youth and is soon alarmed to find a series of lectures instead of a stream of notes as they were used to in school. The lectures moreover are often about an entire novel, which as the professional nineteenth-century novelists realised to their pecuniary benefit, run into hundreds of pages.
My dear readers, I have little doubt that articles like this offer you either new avenues of cogitation or confirmation of your beliefs. We belong to the fortunate lot, who by virtue of social capital and hard work are at ease with such witticisms. My kind readers will however spare a thought for those who were unlucky to not have that social capital while in school. They are the ones who have that love and aspiration for the English language which we have already transcended.
For such aspirational learners, stringing together a few sentences in English is a daunting task, even when they have managed to successfully cross their higher-secondary education. It is this vast population of young India which the English market targets. The Indian market is undoubtedly a success story. Otherwise, despite the population boon or bane, India would not have managed to provide a better life to its citizens than some of its immediate neighbours. Prospective employers who seek English graduates seek personnel who can draft letters in an acceptable manner, go through large volumes of textual material, process it mentally and prepare concise reports based on such critical mental processing. Language skills and critical thinking are the two USPs of English graduates for prospective employers.
Such is the demand. What does most of the supply chain look like? The lack of social capital during schooldays robs the student of language skills. On entering college and opting for English, students try once again to acquire that one skill which will catapult them into the league of the extraordinarily powerful. However, they realise that the course does not address their lack of capital at all. Instead it assumes that they already had it or would acquire it tangentially by reading not English language primers but rather Shakespeare, Paradise Lost and sometimes even Homer in English translation. If the student feels cheated and hard done by the syllabus, I am sure my gentle readers would empathise with them.
Critical thinking is the other factor which employers feel that humanities students would be trained in. English students who may have had a chance of acquiring that skill through other roads, find that their road is blocked—blocked using language. Whereas they had expected a primrose path lined with English language primers, they find the way is steep and thorny and is pot-holed with texts in an obscure language. My gentle readers will again excuse them for abandoning the difficult path and choosing other means of survival.
In a system where admission in colleges is often based solely on marks received in school-leaving examinations and sometimes the cut-off is 99%, dear readers, I am sure we will not grudge them for thinking that marks maketh the mark in life. Where there is a will, there is a way. If classes and text books prove incomprehensible, note books often provide a path to interpret question papers. If even the profitable business of note books fails to provide relief, there is the world of private tuition, but that world, dear readers, is a subject for exploration for another day if I have managed to whet your appetite.
What then is the solution? How is the market to remedy the supply chain? The answer is not only blowing in the wind, it is there in the colleges as well. It is called Communicative English. It is just what most of the students and the employers want. Why then is it not more widely taught? Is English literature to be dispensed with then? These are questions that may be troubling you. Let me assuage your concerns. Literary pursuits are indeed a valid and well-established discipline of higher education, just as performance studies or film studies. Yet, these subjects are rarely taught in India and there are only a few places which offer these specialised courses. Let literary studies be also pushed into that domain, offered by only those colleges and universities which manage to attract those with the privilege of social capital which is necessary for pursuing such academic interests. Let other institutions identify what their students possess and want, and if it seeks to satiate the aspirational desires in the English language of such students, replace English with Communicative English. They may be turning their backs on two hundred years of Shakespeare studies in India. In doing so, they would also be turning their backs on almost two hundred years of Indian note books on Shakespeare. There will be no job-loss of the teachers either as teachers of English are well-equipped to also teach Communicative English.
The Indian English market will perhaps become more efficient through this rationalisation of the supply chain. Even if one is not bothered about education as a commodity and ignores the close relation between education and capital, dear reader, perhaps you will agree that society owes it to the students to free them from the bond of incomprehensible texts.
P.S. I had sent this article to Kolkata's The Telegraph and it was rejected.
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